Venice Film Festival 2023: Poor Thingss Costume Designer On Creating A Sexually Liberated Fashion Fantasia

Table Of Content

• Got a Hot News Tip?
• Maybe this film will spark a leg-of-mutton sleeve trend?
• White House Correspondents Dinner: The Red Carpet Arrivals
• University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA)
• Holly Waddington Wins Best Costume Design Oscar for ‘Poor Things’ With an Auspicious Introduction by John Cena
• The Best Street Style From Milan Design Week

And nowhere is this more apparent than in the captivating realm of Yorgos Lanthimos's Poor Things, which won 4 Oscars at the 96th Academy Awards. The film won Best Costume Design, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Production Design, and the talented Emma Stone took home the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role. I took a load of stuff out in suitcases and met her there.

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But he had the made-in-raspberry velvet pinstripe. So, we did them for Baxter in quilting and wool. We had one that's like a smoking jacket suit, but it's an all-in-one, you don't really see it in the film, but it's sort of a strange garment. It was that, and I think having this long hair that's just free, those two components immediately changed the clothes.

Maybe this film will spark a leg-of-mutton sleeve trend?

Offering both BFA and MFA degrees, the program has a faculty of four professors along with five full-time costume staffers (studio manager, draper, tailor, wardrobe and stock manager), ensuring highly individualized one-on-one guidance. An array of diverse classes range from costume design for dance and millinery to scenography and designing for the camera. Bella is in those all the time, or she’s totally sleeveless. Yorgos was really open-minded about anything I would have come up with, and I presented him with a lot of ideas and options from the late 19th century, and he kept going towards these enormous sleeves. He and Emma were both pushing for it in meetings.

White House Correspondents Dinner: The Red Carpet Arrivals

Usually when you film in black and white, you think about the contrast, but I didn't really do it like that, because I didn't know ahead of time. We did end up remaking a few pieces with more contrast, but we didn't have time to start over after deciding about the black-and-white bit. The costume pieces in the film are some of the most elaborate and intricate we've seen in awhile, and Stone has praised Waddington's work openly. She and the costume designer did an interview together with Interview this week, where Stone even said some of the pieces from this movie are her favorite costume pieces she's worn in her entire career.

Networkers can meet with industry professionals through extracurricular programs at SCAD, FIDM or UCLA. For a well-rounded résumé, classes in costume animation (CalArts), millinery (UMKC) and corsetry (USC) are available. And if location, location, location is at the top of the list, aspiring designers can’t beat Tisch in the Big Apple or one of the L.A. Area’s four schools that benefit from Hollywood right in their backyard.

While such graphic symbols would perplex a regular visitor, to Bella it was another part of the human anatomy. Unlike the other life-size sets, the cruise liner that Bella and Duncan travel on after Lisbon is a miniature that stretches about six feet long. It includes two decks along with internal lights and smoke billowing from the ship’s funnel. A curved LED screen mimicked the deep blue sea and sky. At the beginning, I was less concerned with what the final look would be. I was more concerned with what the conceit and logic would be, how it would evolve.

In addition, the recently added individual studio workspaces, a computer lab, library and lounge at the school allow space for collaboration. But she is also somebody who needs to know conceptually that the idea works for her. Rather than spending lots of time in a fitting to feel how things fit on the body, she was more interested in knowing about the idea behind something and why.

The Best Street Style From Milan Design Week

So we did a lot of work on the color, and then it was black and white, but that kind of worked, because Bella arrives in Lisbon and it's like the world has just exploded in front of her. Suddenly she's out of the house and she sees everything in technicolor. The idea for the dress was that she was married to an army general, and this was almost like a piece of armor and the sleeves were taken from the idea of suit of armor. So that's why they've got the articulated folds going down the arms. But then we had to make this dress in repeat because Bella throws herself off the bridge and it gets covered in mud and water, so we three. It was not at all cost-effective doing this dress this way.

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I started off doing a lot of concept work for Yorgos. One idea was setting it a little bit earlier and having the sleeves tight with the skirts almost phallic. I liked the idea of the clothes referencing body parts somehow and having an organic unruly quality. Then I did a lot of research on these sleeves and he very much went to the sleeves.

Jimmy Kimmel hosted the 96th Academy Awards, a ceremony which honored excellence in cinematic achievements for some of the past year's biggest films. Cena’s almost-naked look was a nod to a streaker who ran across the Oscars stage in 1974, interrupting David Niven’s introduction of Elizabeth Taylor. “Can you imagine if a nude man ran across the stage today? ” asked Jimmy Kimmel, who hosted this year’s ceremony, before bringing Cena to the stage.

While costuming traditional period films is often a lesson in period-perfect authenticity, Waddington by contrast ranged freely in her work. “I was looking at very light fabrics that were beautiful and luxurious but not too grown-up,” she says. “To me, it was important there was a sense of organic in every detail. Victorian clothes are decorated with lots of beads, feathers and lace, which was a hallmark.

Behind the Fantastical Costumes of Yorgos Lanthimos's Poor Things - Who What Wear

Behind the Fantastical Costumes of Yorgos Lanthimos's Poor Things.

Posted: Thu, 07 Dec 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]

While many would imagine the presence of a corset within the film, Waddington opted away from it, calling it a "potent, heavily loaded piece of clothing" that felt like "bondage" and wrong for Bella's character. "It is impossible to tie her down," she said. The designer Holly Waddington breaks down how Emma Stone’s Bella Baxter evolves onscreen, from her childish knickers to her cage-like wedding dress. But then that all ended up being black and white, didn't it?

She embraces her newfound sense of agency, challenging societal judgment and embracing her sexuality without shame, navigating a world of whimsy and wonder. The character, the Lady in the Radiator, really struck a chord with me, because when I was a child, I was convinced that I had a doll trapped down the back of my radiator that wore a red PVC raincoat and had blonde hair. So when I saw this film, I couldn't believe it!

Janet Patterson's costumes had such a lasting impression on me, and I rewatched it recently and marveled about how much that film does not appear dated. Sometimes, costumes get stuck in the period in which the film was made, but the costumes were as exquisite and fresh as they felt then. The music by Michael Nyman is also stunning, and Holly Hunter in that role — that bare face coming out of that boat in the beginning! It's so beautifully directed and the costume design and the music, everything. “I wanted to try and give [the costume design] its own sort of material language,” she said, while also describing the sort of Frankensteining she and her team did.

And we spent an afternoon trying to work out what we would do. And I did have lots of different, more Victorian-looking pants. She does wear them a bit, but it felt like she needed to be a little bit more sophisticated. When she got to Lisbon, we did the wardrobe to shunt along a bit and to be less childlike and more playful. In the way that Bella (Emma Stone) rapidly learns and adapts, her fashion reflects that transformation as well.

For me, my worst nightmare would be walking down the street buttoned from the waist up but with nothing from the waist down. It’s a nightmare for grown-ups, but for this character in Lisbon after a siesta, it felt right. There are certain moments where Bella is dressing herself, and it’s like a five-year-old dressing herself from her mother’s wardrobe. Bella embarks on a strange, erotic journey around the globe that brings her from Portugal to Egypt and beyond. But if you love movies, you’ll love every minute of this intense, emotional, and hilarious romp. The film's Bella Baxter, played by Emma Stone, donned standout looks that truly embodied main character energy that aligns seamlessly with her role as a young Victorian London woman (brought back to life by an unorthodox scientist) on a journey of self-discovery.